Twilight Zombie

A work of ...Six zombies and a typewriter, I guess. By a very Busyguy.

~Chapter One - A Harsh Intruduction~

Twilight woke up.

There wasn’t any pain or a headache, though. She just woke up naturally. As if the terror of the collapsing magic hadn’t even touched her.

Her eyes opened quickly, scanning for dangerous free magic; and then they opened a bit wider. She was alone, laying on her side in a field of grass. There was a strange looking forest nearby, forming a false horizon only a few minutes trot in front of her. There wasn't anything in particular that led her to decide it was different from a normal forest, but her gut feeling was screaming that what she was seeing was wrong.

Equestria was a lush and green place, with grass so thick it was like walking on a medium-shag carpet. But the sickly looking stuff now crinkling against her fur was nothing remotely close to lush, being all but dead and dry. In fact, everything her slightly harried gaze fell on seemed to be either severely malnourished, outright rotten, or sun-bleached to a unhealthy and crisp light brown.

The grass nearest her muzzle was thin and sparse, with barely any green showing on the narrow blades. The distant forest looked equally dried out and starved for water, with little vibrence to its canopy. What few healthy plants she could see were oddly well defended, with sharp thorns or a waxy looking surface Zecora had said usually meant a poisonous coating.

And Twilight started to worry...

She knew her plants fairly well, or at least as well as a pony who had access to a market needed to. But all of the species she was seeing from her current position were wholly unfamiliar. Had she botched her spell worse than she’d thought? This entire place felt so different that she had to wonder...

And that wonder led her straight into yet more worry. She needed to think for a moment, but the sun felt like it was burning her. She was also already feeling pretty parched, and was thinking about water as much as she was thinking about the plant life.

Twilight could think on her hooves just as well as on her flank, so she decided it would be wise to find water and a place to rest before anything else. She might even be able to find out where she was. And if she knew that, then it would just be a simple matter of calculating distance and direction to teleport back home.

Twilight got to her hooves, and headed for the nearby forest at a reserved trot. It would have more shade from the sun than an open field, no matter how dead it looked from her spot a few hundred yards away.

Her hoof-falls kicked up clouds of dust as she trotted forward, confirming what she already knew. This field was as dry as Dodge Junction, and just as wickedly hot. Water was definitely going to be her top priority, followed by shelter. Food was certainly no problem, if she could stomach the dry grass and find enough water to wash it all down.

Just to make sure, she dropped her head low to snag a few blades from a greener spot as she passed. She maneuvered the tough food to rest centered on her tongue after giving it a few quick chomps to release the flavor and…

“Blaa! ….eeyuck!” It tasted horrible! That had to be the worst tasting substance she’d ever put in her mouth! It tasted worse than dirt! Or actually, it tasted exactly like dirt! A flavor she'd had enough of during her early days of learing to use her wings. Needless to say, she would rather starve!

Twilight mentally added ‘find actual food’ to her list of top priority things to get done today.

A heavy sigh escaped her dry throat as the first swath of shade drifted across her back. Her coat had been warmed up a good deal in the sun, so the relief wasn’t as fast in coming as she’d hoped. It did feel good, though. She quickly found the biggest tree she could, and plopped herself right down against the trunk. She then jumped right back up with a yelp, twisting back to check her backside for damage. It didn't take more than a glance to notice three shallow scrapes just above her tail, which were slowly turning red.

It seemed like the trees around here were just as hard and sharp as the grass...

A bit of careful magic saw to the damage for the moment, and she settled down on her belly in the tree’s meager shade. Twilight had half expected healing spells to fail her, given all this afternoon’s craziness. But her flank was left unmarred after the magic set in, and she felt the hefty amount of energy she’d used recover in under a minute or so. It was certainly nice, being an Alicorn with so much magical potential at her disposal. She would have to watch her reserves if food was going to be scarce, but not until she actually started getting hungry. She was hoping to find food long before that started to become an issue. In the meantime, she had plenty of, well ...time.

And speaking of time...

Twilight lifted her head and looked up at the sun. She winced at just how unbearably bright it was. It also seemed smaller than normal. Maybe she was on the other side of Equus, and so the sun was further away? But how could it be hotter if she was further from it? That didn’t make any sense.

As she pondered, Twilight noticed that the sun had changed position. Not much, but enough to force her to scoot over to keep her shaded spot shaded. The over-bright sun was definitely lower in the sky, so it had to be early evening here in …wherever she was. She wasn’t going to have much time to plan things out, if she even wanted to move or try anything to get home again.

Twilight looked around with a more critical eye, trying to get a feel for how hard it would be to navigate through the oddly dry forest once the sunset stole away the daylight. She didn’t think it would be too difficult, considering the forest was fairly free of fallen branches and logs. But the unnatural shapes of the trunks - with their big holes and knobby growths - would certainly be scary no matter how bright Luna decided to make the moon shine. She was going to miss Pinkie’s carefree attitude about scary stuff. In fact ...she actually kind of missed her already.

Her friends would be worried that she hadn’t come back right away, but Twilight didn’t dare risk a normal teleportation spell without knowing where she was. If she didn’t get it right or she lacked the magic to make it all the way, she could be crushed under the weight of Planet Equus itself. Or worse, burned alive in its blistering hot liquid iron and thaumite core…

So then what other options did she have? Well, two came to mind easily enough. Option one: Sleep in a field on the hard ground without knowing what kind of creatures came out at night to roam the local forest she was in. Or option two: Trudge through that same scary forest all night and into the unknown.

Twilight couldn’t decide which idea was worse. So she wound up pacing under her tree, trying desperately to make the right decision. But even pondering the pros and cons was impossible. Nopony alive knew what lived on the ‘dark side of the world’, as ponies called it. Some giant monster could come out of the woods and grab her if she fell asleep out in the field, and she could trot right into some eldritch monstrosity’s open mouth if she got caught out in the forest in the dead of night.

Twilight eventually decided to try the forest. She did so on the grounds that she wouldn’t be sleeping with all these worries in her head anyway, and that if she stayed here for the night she’d have accomplished nothing when the sun rose in the morning. The forest was the more logical choice, of the two she'd managed to come up with.

If also the more frightening choice of the two...

Taking a nice long breath to calm herself, Twilight picked a direction and began her trek deeper into the forest. For a good hour or so, she kept up a quick and steady pace. The trunks didn’t seem to get any thicker as she went deeper like they did in the Everfree, so she didn’t have any sense of how deep she actually was. The only way she even knew she was still going in relatively the same direction was the sun, and that was swiftly becoming a rare sight. She could only guess at the time, but it was definitely late in the evening by now. And of course that was based on the assumption that this side of the world kept to a similar time pattern, which of course it might not if Celestia was actively moving the sun around.

Another three hours, and Twilight’s hopes that Celestia would leave the sun on her current side of the world for storage were dashed. The sky had steadily turned a reddish-pink hue, and then it had gotten as dark as her old oaken home’s basement laboratory at night. She’d been forced to light her way with her horn, and had quickly stopped trying to make actual progress. It was time to find a decent shelter, she felt. Somewhere nice and high up off the forest floor, out of reach of anything that might fancy her for a late night snack. Somewhere she could stop thinking and just rest her tired mind.

Rest was wishful thinking, though. Twilight doubted she would get much sleep tonight. But she had no way to tell where she was going, and she needed some peace of mind more than anything else …except water. Water would be really nice. She was well beyond parched now, and hadn’t seen a single sign of water anywhere during her four hour trek through the woods. How all these trees were even clinging to life, she had no idea. But they were, and they were tall. In fact, they were really the only choice she could think of for shelter.

It took a few close calls with flying in the dark, and she was fairly certain she’d cut her cheek on a wickedly thorny tree; but Twilight managed to find a decent spot among the branches of a very old looking oak. Her spot for the night was a good eighty feet off the ground, so she felt safe enough to cancel her light spell and curl up in a flat space where the trunk of her tree of choice split into two. She spread her wings to cover herself as best she could, and let her thoughts simply run free…

This place was very different from Equestria. The biggest forest she knew of was the Everfree, which was quite the massive place by itself. But this forest was even bigger. A group of botanists had submitted a detailed report just last year, which she had helped turn into a proper reference book. They had managed to traverse the entirety of the Everfree forest from the south border all the way to the north, and they did so in just under six hours.

But Twilight had been keeping a decent pace for at least four hours. She’d not stopped even once, and had no obligations of stopping to collect samples or observe the flora and take notes to slow her down. It was very likely that she’d covered a great deal more ground than those botanist ponies had, and yet the scenery hadn’t changed one bit. Either she’d wandered in a circle somehow - which she was nearly certain she hadn't since she'd used the sun as a fixed point at her back - or this forest was a lot bigger than the Everfree.

Both options were equally concerning.

To be honest with herself, Twilight wanted to go back. She wanted to turn around and make sure that she would at least get out of this endless woodland, even if it meant reversing all her progress. But she knew there wasn’t a drop of water to be had back the way she’d come. Another four hours in the heat without a drink would be a stupid thing to put herself through, and Twilight Sparkle was not a pony for doing stupid things. She was not going to go back to that empty field. Not after so much effort had had been put into going forward. Her best course of action at this point would be to wait for morning, and then risk burning off a bit of her remaining water with a quick flight above the trees. If she saw a sign of water, then fine. She’d hydrate herself and just keep going in the same direction she'd gone today. If she didn’t see water though, then... well she’d just have to get creative.

That she knew of, there were three ways to use magic to make clean enough water for drinking. Two of them required having a source of non-potable water to start with, which she didn't currently have. The last spell would work, but it was a physical construct meant to be created by a team of ten unicorns out on military search parties in isolated areas with no potable water. The required spellwork would leave her tired for a few hours while her magic recovered at this point, but it was better than being too dehydrated to walk. So long as it yielded a good supply of clean water, she would be alright for a few days. If it didn’t yield enough - however - she’d be in serious danger of getting dehydrated to an unhealthy degree.

Her plans laid more or less clear in her head, Twilight tucked her chin into her forelegs. She closed her eyes, and did some deep breathing routines for a while, feeling her body start to finally relax.

And every time she nearly fell asleep from that point forward, panic woke her up again…

Lost… Alone… Deep in an unfamiliar forest, with no supplies and no way out except her own diminishing ability to keep going. And again she asked herself why the spell that brought her here collapsed. How had it not simply killed her outright, instead? She knew that the spell was highly volatile by design. It had to be powerful to force open the barrier between her world and the mirror world, as intended. But that very power should have had a stabilizing effect on the spell’s structure. And another concern was that the thaumic energy should have been dissipated in a controlled manner during any sort of collapse, due to the multi-layered design. All the layers had to be intact for the portal to exist, but it had collapsed suddenly ...violently.

Twilight was led inexarably to the most mind boggling question she'd ever faced: Why had she been pulled into an active portal, and not simply been tossed across an open space of empty dirt after the spell dissipated? It shouldn't have been intact enough to have in potential as a portal, after the second stage failsafe's failure. There should have been a portal at all, by the time she was pulled off her hooves and into forward motion.

“Gah! This makes no sense!” Twilight cried into the quickly cooling night sky.

Although… She should be in the mirror world now, right? That's what the spell was meant to do, was give her a portal to look into the human world and see how things were going for them (and maybe make some observations). But if she was here, then why was she still a pony? Entering the mirror had always changed her body into the rather thin and tall shape of a younger human girl, before. But then she hadn’t actually gone through the mirror this time, so…

Twilight huffed into the gap between her dusty forelegs. She was getting ahead of herself in assuming she’d been pulled into the mirror world anyway. That place was certainly very different from Equestria, but as far as she knew it didn’t have half-dead plants and dangerously tough trees as a common theme. This forest was just too different from anything she’d ever seen in ANY world to take any kind of guesswork for granted.

The thought of that - that she might not ever know where she really was - it was terrifying! What would she do if this was neither of the worlds that she’d been to? What if it was somewhere altogether new?

What if she couldn’t get back?

Twilight noticed that her heart was racing, and she had to start her deep breathing again to calm back down. Now was not the time for panic! She would just have to figure things out for herself. And she would figure it out! If magic could do something, then it could undo it. That was a basic rule of hoof in the study of magic. All she needed was time. Time to think and to plan. And hopefully she would find a better place in the morning for thinking than the scratchy branches of a dried up old tree.

~~~~~~

Twilight’s head shot up. She’d …fallen asleep? She must have been pretty worn out for sleep to win out against her anxiety last night.

A yawn and a good stretch saw her wincing at the tightness in her shoulders and back. It was normal for her to feel a bit groggy in the morning, but right now she felt like she’d slept in a ...tree. Eh ...heh.

~Thump~ “…huuuuuuuugh”

Twilight's thoughts were interrupted. She’d heard a hollow thud below, followed by a sickly sounding moan.

Very slowly and carefully, Twilight poked her head out of her shaded perch. She looked down, and movement quickly caught her eye. There was an older male human walking along the forest floor, right under her tree! So she’d been right! This was the mirror world after all! All she had to do was get to Canterlot High School and find the schoolyard statue without being seen and …and what the hay was the human doing?

Twilight felt her excitement fade as the human dragged himself along at a snail’s pace. He seemed to be under the influence of a substantial amount of cider, or something equally inebriating. The gross stains down the front of his shirt made that much pretty obvious. He seemed barely able to walk, much less avoid trip hazards. She even had to stop herself from rushing to help when he proved her assumptions correct, tripping over an obvious log and toppling forward without even trying to catch himself. The thud he made as he hit the ground was a match to the sound that she’d heard earlier, as was the pained groan he emitted as he slowly wobbled back to his feet.

Several questions ran through her mind, like: ‘What was he doing out here in such a large forest?’ ‘Why did he look so dirty?’ ‘…And what the hay was that awful smell!? Ugh… wow, that's …that's really awful!’

Twilight covered her nose as she watched the stricken man wobble and lurch off in another random direction. He must be looking for something, probably water. She would have to think of a way to…

Twilight’s mind ground to a halt as the human stopped, and turned just enough that she could see his face. The man’s chin was dangling freely on one side, and his face had a large gash ripped across it. He wasn’t drunk at all! He was injured, and injured very severely!

Twiilght couldn’t just hide in her tree and do nothing about an injury that bad. It simply wasn’t in her nature. She would just have to hope the man could keep a secret, because she was not going to let him suffer out here in the middle of this forest! Not with a broken jaw and such massive facial trauma! It already looked infected!

Twilight slowly raised a foreleg and waved, instantly drawing the injured man’s complete attention. She smiled and called, “Um, hello? I was just wondering, um... Well see, I'm a peaceful spirit! ...Of the forest. I noticed that you’re rather badly hurt, and I just want to help you a little …okay?” Twilight spoke in as calm a voice as she could muster. It was a decent story, if a bit improbable. But who knew? Maybe he would buy it when she fully revealed her Alicorn form?

Her fears lessened a bit when the man didn’t run away screaming. In fact, he actually seemed rather excited as he began limping toward the base of her tree.

Twilight made sure to keep her smile genuine as she pushed off of the tree and swooped down to the ground, landing a bit further away than she'd intended. She’d had her wings for a good while now, but descending quickly was still the bane of her existence (And Rainbow’s favorite target for the occasional light-hearted taunt). Twilight spun on her hooves, finding the injured man had already shifted paths to continue limping toward her. He was moving at a slightly faster pace than he’d been going before, clearly excited about meeting a friendly face that was willing to help.

She gave him her most winning smile and said, “It’s good I found you ...human. My forest is, um …pretty big.” She felt her smile waver as she winced internally. Telling lies was definitely not her strong suit, and even she could tell that her choice of words had sounded forced.

But the man either didn’t notice the slip in her wording, or was in too much pain to actually care. If she had to guess, he probably just wanted help as fast as possible. He stumbled toward her with the rigid movements of a pain-racked body, and she quickly started forward to meet him halfway.

“Please, just sit down and rest. I don’t need to be close to heal you, and we forest spirits are a fairly nervous bunch. You wouldn’t want to, um ...scare me away, now would you?” Twilight said with a toss of her mane. She wanted to appear as calm and disarming as possible, but didn’t want the human to get too close for her to quickly get out of reach if she needed to. The Rarity of this world had made it clear to her that not all humans were peaceful, and that some could be downright mean if they’d had a hard enough life or were born with an evil heart.

But the human ignored her request, continuing his determined limp until he was only thirty feet away. Twilight stopped and turned a bit, making sure her horn was lit and easily visible. She didn’t like being ignored in dire circumstances, and the wounded human was much bigger than her. The situation was starting to feel a bit intimidating...

“That’s close enough, please. Now just sit down and …ugh,” Twilight nearly gagged as the smell from before suddenly invaded her nose. It was so powerful that it completely derailed her train of thought. She felt tears form in her eyes as the potent stench overpowered any other smell in the forest, and she'd taken a step back before she'd even noticed doing so.

The human adjusted his course to follow her without slowing, and raised his pale arms toward her. It was at this point that Twilight noticed that the man's skin was in worse condition than just being dirty, and that what she'd thought to be a stylized piece of clothing was something far worse.

A large flap of white skin hung from underneath the man's shirt, indicating a much larger wound beneath his dirtied clothing. And the cider stains on his shirt were now looking a bit too reddened to be just from having too much to drink.

Twilight took another step back. “I, um…” She tried, but she was quickly overcome by the smell before more words could get out. The man was now twenty feet away, his ragged breath coming in rapid bursts as he increased his uneven pace even further...

Twilight took another step back, this time a bigger one. “I’m just going to… Gak!” She gagged once again, and the man was only ten feet away now. A low moan issued from his damaged throat as he closed in. And now that he was so close, Twilight realized his facial wound had marks along the sides...

Marks that took the familiar half-circle shape she'd found in her own food, the last time she'd taken the form of a human girl.

“Gah!” Twilight cried as the man lunged toward her with an inarticulate gargle. She back-peddled out of reach and then quickly leapt into the air. She ascended rapidly, heading back to her spot in the tree. Her heart hammered in her chest as she landed, and she felt her stomach roll dangerously from the lingering smell.

A loud moan and scratching noises got her to finally look once again, and she felt a strange combination of fear and relief. The wounded man was raking his hands against the massive oak tree's trunk, and staring at her with his jaw flopping against his chest. It seemed he wasn't much for climbing. She was safe from …whatever it was he had been trying to do.

Twilight threw the man a glare and called, “What where you trying to do? I asked you not to get so close! You really scared me!" She pushed her mane out of her eyes and continued with, "You know... You’re very lucky that I’m a nice ...forest spirit, or I’d just probably just disappear and leave you here ...severely injured and ...alone." Her heart calmed a bit, even as it guided her next words, "Now please... be a good injured human, and stand still so I can try to heal your injuries. It's costly magic, and I don't want to miss you.”

The man just ignored her, his blunted fingers continuing to barely even damaging the bark on her tree. He certainly wasn't the brightest human she’d ever met, though he was easily the toughest …and definitely the worst smelling.

Twilight waited until she’d calmed enough to use magic properly, and then lit her horn. She was going to be using a very basic healing spell that she and all other unicorns were taught in their last years of school. It dramatically increased the metabolism of damaged cells, while pulling away heat from the affected area to keep the healing tissues from getting too warm in the process. It was the same spell she’d used on her scratches yesterday evening, and didn’t require knowledge of the target’s biology to work. Of course, that meant it was a rather bad idea to miss, as it would affect anything with a metabolism; even plants and fungi. She’d learned that lesson herself when she’d hit a small sapling with it out of curiosity, and then had to explain the sudden hole in her parent’s ceiling. They'd revoked her desert rights for a whole week...

~Scratch scratch~ “Huuuuuraagh!”

Twilight snapped out of her thoughts, noticing that the injured man had abandoned his fingers and opted instead to use his teeth. He wasn’t getting anywhere without an intact lower jaw, and she could actually hear his broken bones popping against each other as he repeatedly bashed his head into the rough bark.

“What are you… Stop doing that! You’re making your injuries worse!” Twilight cried as she quickly lined up her horn. The first pulse of magic was cast, and went wide as the man’s teeth slipped from the bark, causing him to jerk to the side. Twilight watched as several large ferns popped up under the man’s feet. She narrowed her eyes, charged her horn, and carefully fired another burst of both the metabolic and cooling spells. This time the human stumbled back a bit and fell onto his back. She’d hit him right in the face that time, which was actually good as it would be quick to start working on his jaw.

Twilight gave the magic a moment to work, but nothing really seemed to happen. She squinted, trying to see if the human's wounds were looking any better, but they weren't healing.

Well now how was that possible? She knew she’d hit him, so why wasn’t his tissue reacting?

She fired another shot into the man's chest, again giving it a few minutes to work. He was starting to take on a bit more color, but the wounds simply refused to close up.

Was he sick? ...And the healing magic was being absorbed by internal injuries before it had a chance to work on his visible wounds? She’d heard of that sort of thing happening with frostbite victims who had the feather flu. The combined damage of the disease and frostbite would require more than one dose of magic to have any visible effects.

Of course, Twilight wasn't the average caster. She never had been, really. She had an alternative to sitting here all day, casting the same small healing spell and letting her magic recover between each shot.

...Add power, until the magic overcame whatever effect was happening here and a positive effect was achieved.

She charged her horn once again, putting a good amount of extra 'oomph' into the two-part spell. It was a lot of healing energy, enough to likely heal every bone in the average pony’s body. Any more than this could actually do harm if it hit in the wrong spot, so if nothing happened this time she would be forced to get up close and run some proper scans to find the real cause of the problem.

It was easy to hit the man, as he was still unsuccessfully trying to get up from the first impact of magic. Twilight's souped-up version of the same spell struck him right in the gut, and he likely would have been thrown off balance even if he was at his best, just from the force of the magic flooding into him.

He lay still for a moment, and then his skin started to …bubble? Well that wasn’t a normal side effect for a healing spell, even if over-saturation occurred. Twilight found herself confused, unable to think of what to do as the man’s bubbling skin darkened to an alarmingly angry red.

The exposed skin on the human's face began to steam, and a moment later he suddenly started to scream and jerk around violently. The next thing she knew, he was half way up the tree. But how had he done that?! She hadn’t even seen him stand up, and OH CELESTIA NO!

Twilight saw a single row of bloody and broken teeth, and a bright red tongue surrounded by mangled gums and dark purple bone marrow. Her legs pushed against the tree without waiting for permission, and she felt the air bend her eyelashes as a boiling and steaming human hand lashed out from where she’d been standing idle only milliseconds ago. She barely managed to avoid an uncontrolled spin as her wings grabbed unevenly at the air, and a split second later she felt a sudden flash of pain as several feathers in her right wing were grabbed and yanked from their roots. The man had leapt out at her from the tree and grabbed her wing, even though there was nothing to stop him from falling. He warbled and screamed as he twisted through the air, still reaching out with his steaming red hands. There was a surreal moment where they locked eyes, and Twilight couldn’t think of a moment in her life when she’d seen such rage in another creature’s eyes …not even Lord Tirek had looked so angry.

The man made no attempt to save himself, simply slamming into the ground with a hollow thud and the sound of numerous bones breaking deep inside his body. It was a massive impact, but it still did nothing to stop him. He was on his feet a second later, mindlessly raging up at Twilight's dangling legs. His hands clawed and grabbed, though she was still at least sixty feet above the ground. His garbled cries and jerky movements quickly became even more desperate, and Twilight nearly stopped flapping her wings when the light wisps of steam from his skin suddenly became a torrent of thick black smoke. A second later, the man burst into a towering inferno of orange and red flames, though he barely even seemed to notice. If anything, he only got louder, trying desperately to pull her down to the ground.

Twilight was unable to tear her eyes away. She watched in stunned silence as the man swiftly fell to greasy charred ruin. His hands, arms and feet went first, flying free from his flailing form to roll across the ground like flaming marshmallows launched from a stick. A knee then collapsed, sending the rest of his form tumbling to the ground. It wasn’t possible, but he continued to rage at her even from the ground, right up until the moment his ruined face finally caved in like there hadn’t been a thing behind it left to burn...

A long moment passed. And Twilight did nothing, watching silently as the smoldering pile of what was once a living human being slowly lost form and began to pop and crackle as it cooled. She didn’t know how long she stayed there, but by the time her eyes broke away only a small outline of ashes remained.

Feeling utterly numb, Twilight's wings finally stopped flapping, and she slowly glided to the ground. She forced herself to move away from the place, walking on wobbly legs and not daring to look back. She couldn’t stay there, even to learn what had gone wrong. Not for a mountain of bits... Not for every scholarship in all of Equestria...

...Not for every scrap of knowledge in the Mirror world.

She even had to force herself to blink, because her eyes seemed to have forgotten how to do so on their own. They kept feeling dry, even when she could feel that they weren't.

What the hay had just happened? Granted, she already knew the answer, but it was still impossible. There was only one way that the cooling magic would have failed to keep the heat of the increased metabolism spell in check, and that was if it didn't get activated on impact. And all that took was a sign of life, being in contact with the affected tissues. A spark of life, if you went by the standardized terminology. It was the most basic component of any spell used in the field of medicine …and yet it had utterly failed to work on that human.

It was ridiculous. And yet she’d watched it happen with her own eyes. In fact, she doubted the image of those rage-filled eyes would ever leave her. The ordeal just kept replaying in her head, except now she knew the impossible truth for what it had to be.

He'd been dead, before she'd even had the thought to heal his wounds.

Initial impact of a two-part metabolic healing spell: The human had been infused with the spell’s magic and the active components had gone to work, dramatically increasing his metabolic and cellular division rates in damaged areas. But the damage was more extensive than was apparent on external observation, and the first spell had been completely absorbed before showing any outward signs of effect.

Second impact of the same spell: Similar results, though the human's internal temperature would have already begun climbing rapidly without the cooling spells being activated at this point. The toughest pony in all of Equestria would be showing signs of discomfort from this point onward through the events that followed, though the injured human hadn't reacted at all until the very end.

Third impact… A larger and more dense dose of metabolic healing magic was delivered straight to the center of the patient's body. The metabolic effect would have been instantaneous, and extremely aggressive. But the cooling spells remained inactive, due to the patient not having a soul to set it off. The human’s overheated tissues became warmer and warmer as the cells were forced to replicate and burn energy at an accelerated rate. It wasn't long before the heat began to destroy tissue instead of accelerate healing, which only made the magic redouble its efforts to heal the damage as cells began to die off by the thousands. It was a vicious cycle ...one that led to a living thing being superheated all the way to the point of a violent and spontaneous combustion.

But …why? He’d been standing up and moving, right? He'd been walking around like only a living thing could, she'd seen so with her own eyes! So why hadn’t he had a spark of life to activate the cooling part of the healing spell!? Anything with the power to affect the world in any way, shape, or form had at least some kind of spark dwelling within it! Ponies and animals had theirs in the form of a soul. Wind and water, flame and ice, earth and plant… they each had an elemental spark unique to their nature. Literally everything had a spark!

…Everything except a wounded human, wondering around alone in the woods. A human that didn’t even poses the basic components to make the simplest spell in the field of Equestrian medicine think he was actually a living thing.

Twilight lurched to a stop. She felt dizzy, and her tummy didn’t give her much warning before she’d started heaving. There wasn’t even any water to come up, but it was still awful. And it the end of it, she was left exhausted and panting on the forest floor.

She’d killed somepony, today… A human without the spark of life. He couldn’t have had a single thought in his head at the time of death, nor the ability to actually feel what was happening to him. And even if he could feel it, he wouldn't care. Caring - even about felt pain - would require a soul. But still... He’d been moving when they’d met, and he was nothing but a pile of slightly scattered ash when she left.

And that fact was making her sick.

She probably would have just laid there and not moved until her thirst or fear of monsters chased her up into another tree for the night, but she couldn't. She knew she had a powerful reason to get up and keep moving.

Her friends needed her. And dear sweet Celestia, did she need her friends right now. Or anypony that wasn't a male human covered in wounds, really…

A road, a town, a simple vapor trail in the distance as a pegasus went about their daily business... Anything would be a complete joy right now. She just wanted to see another sentient face. To hear words, understand them, and maybe respond with a few of her own.

…It would be proof that she wasn’t the murderous freak she currently felt herself to be.

Twilight ignored the tired and sick feeling in her body, and forced herself to stand back up. She had to keep moving if she wanted to make it through this hellish place and find what she needed the most ...water. She closed her eyes and took one single breath …and then she just suddenly started sobbing. There was no stopping the tears, either. It wasn’t even that she’d killed the human. He hadn’t technically been sentient at the time of his death. And it wasn’t her desperation or the thirst, either.

It was the smell. That horrible smell still hadn’t left her nostrils. And so much worse then just that fact, she realized that it had been there right from the very moment she’d first woken up in that dusty field of half-dead grass. It clung to the soil and hung in the air like a permanent feature of the land itself, growing or receding in strength, but never actually leaving completely. The source of the stench, she had all but already confirmed. But she didn’t want to acknowledge the obvious truth just yet. It would be hard enough to get out of this horrid place as it was. She didn’t need to be worrying about even more potential trouble. The question of what the soul-less man would have done if he had actually caught hold of her wing and not just the feathers burned hot in her mind, but she forced it back. She had already worked out a plan, and it wasn’t going to change just because she was scared out of her wits and sick with grief. The worst thing she could do was sit down and give up.

She had to keep going.

Twilight blinked her tears away. She needed to be able to see clearly if she was going to fly. Her wings lifted up over her back, and she shifted her weight onto her rear hooves. With a quick push and a hard flap, she leapt into the air. Two seconds later, she was rolling across ground four feet to the right of where she’d taken off.

Her wing… The feathers she'd just lost!

Desperation tried to set in, but Twilight clearly remembered hovering over the burning human for a good long while. She could fly. She knew she could!

Twilight fought back the lump in her throat, and she leapt into the sky once more. Her takeoff wasn’t very strong, but she focused on keeping the lift from each wing as even as possible. It took a massive amount of effort and concentration now that she wasn't running on raw instinct, but she managed to build a bit of upward momentum before she broke through the sparse canopy. Her eyes squinted against the sun’s already oppressive heat, and she waited for her eyes to adjust…

…And words would never be able to describe the feeling that went through her, when the sight that spread across the horizon came into focus.

Miles… Miles upon endless miles of mountainous forest, all of it exactly the same as the rest. She felt her heart nearly break at the sheer scale of the task she had to overcome. Her chances might have actually been better, had she risked a blind teleport through the core of the entire planet.

No food. No water. And the smell of death stalking the land below…

It was just too much. She was an Alicorn, the most powerful being to walk her world. And yet she was going to die all alone out here in this wretched bucking wasteland of a stupid bucking forest! And she was going to die soon, because there was no sign of a break in the trees to reveal any lakes or rivers anywhere. The only option left was to make her own water, but a magical condenser would likely only net her enough water for a few hours in this desert of a forest. The magic used would take half a day to recuperate in her current condition, so that's...

Three days. That’s what she had. Three miserable... Hungry... Thirsty... Days.

…to live.

An anguished cry built up deep within her chest, but Twilight countered it with a simple grunt. A very loud, very angry grunt. And there was plenty more anger were it had come from. She was now officially and royally angry. She’d faced down the avatar of chaos itself, banished an ancient being of nearly limitless malice and power to the gates of Tartarus, and even faced down an entire hive of Changeling drones. This was nothing. Nothing! A solution to the water issue would come to mind in no time, and she would be laughing at her own weakness by the end of the day!

…Or she would fail, and become a shriveled pile of motionless skin-wrapped bones ...never to be found by her own kind, ever.

With anger, fear, and anguish trying to balance each other out in her heart, Twilight carefully coasted back down below the trees. She shut out her negative thoughts as best she could, and got to work. A suitable spot wasn't difficult to find, with the entire forest being one big sandbox with trees spaced out more than wide enough for her needs. First, the ground was quickly blasted clear of debris with unguided telekinesis, and then carefully leveled to the best of her ability. She was about to build the first layer of the structure, but a stick near her hooves gave her a surprisingly simple idea on saving some magic ...which was important, now that she'd vomited and there was no food in her stomach to make more.

Twenty minutes later, and Twilight was looking at a simple structure made of two small trees propped up with a few smaller branches. And the only magic she’d had to use was levitation, which cost next to nothing as she could reabsorb most of the magic involved. Her brother would have been proud, as he was actually the one who’d first told her about this field of magic in the first place. He’d even been the one to walk her through this very spell. He wasn't the best teacher, preferring to spend what little time they had just hanging out and talking about the future. But she'd learned, regardless. She’d been speechless when that first drop of water had fallen from the bottom of her rather crude spellwork, and Shining had eventually admitted that learning new things was time well-spent.

But most importantly, her idea to use trees as a base was a success. Her success. It made her feel better about the utter load of horse apples life was currently dragging her through, and gave her the will to keep going.

First came the tiring parts: Making a glass bowl was a simple enough thing to accomplish, as it was just the application of raw heat to a lump of finely powdered silica. Silica was pretty much just sand, and that was available right under her increasingly sore hooves.

Next came two thin shield spells, spanning the distance between the trees on the wooden framework she'd made. They were quickly affixed to the dry wood with four simple binding spells. One shield was a standard solid defensive type, and the other was enchanted to act like a flat sheet of icy cold air. The first, she'd learned from her brother, and the second she'd figured out from taking apart a modern version of the classic ice box.

Finally came the over-shield. It had to be shaped just right, fully enclosing the other shields and provide insulation. The most difficult part was making the three necessary holes, as each hole in the over-shield had to be focused on to be maintained. One hole for air to come in, one for air to leave, and another small one for water to drip from at the bottom. Once she was sure it was seamless, Twilight tried to clearly picture the entire construct as a single cohesive unit in her mind ...and let go. Her work wavered a little, but quickly stabilized into a ...actually decent final product. She could tell, as it was still clear as glass from top to bottom and was already starting to fog up a small amount.

And the best thing about working with a physical construct? She could now focus on pulling water from the air, without having to consciously maintain thirteen independent spells and enchantments at the same time.

...Except the cold spell, as it wasn't in a stable state. Cold didn't like heat, which was why she had to keep feeding the enchantment. It would degrade rapidly if she didn't keep feeding it magic.

With the main structure ready, Twilight placed her glass bowl under the hole in the bottom of the large rectangular construct, and added a very gentle wind spell to her efforts. She directed the air through the right hole in her creation and across the two inner shields, then out through the left hole.

The load on her magic wasn’t as bad as she’d expected, now that it was up and running. But she would still have a headache if she kept both the cold and wind spells going for long enough to have a good supply of drinking water.

Twilight mentally extended her remaining lifespan by ...about two days.

She didn’t even smile when the glass-like device started to form beads of moisture on the sides. Instead, she allowed the spells to settle into the back of her mind and thought about her plans for when the sun once again sank below the horizon.

Sleeping on the ground wasn't an option. Her encounter with the soulless but moving human was proof of that. But trees were uncomfortable things, unfit for a pony of any lot in life no matter if their cutie mark was a bejeweled tiara or a simple straw hat. She was not sleeping in a tree tonight. A cave was a good idea, so long as it was up on a cliff; but she’d have to get incredibly lucky to find a suitable example. That meant planning around finding a good cave was foalish. A sturdy wooden shack or something would be nice, but would cost a great deal of precious magic to make, and still leave her on the ground.

So then how about a combination? Build a small shelter in the higher limbs of a tree? …No, that would still be far too costly if she had to keep making her own water.

Twilight considered making a permanent condenser from physical materials. If she didn’t have to hold a construct in the physical plane she would only need to burn magic on maintaining the one small cold spell. The act of walking would move the air through the chamber to make water. But the initial cost of making glass and metal would be much larger, and anything large enough to keep her going would likely be far too heavy to carry around ...or at least without burning up all her magic.

Twilight sighed... It seemed like the laws of energy conservation and physics were stacked against her. Her best option was still feeling like what the current plan involved: moving forward at a steady pace. She would fill a couple bowls with water and just …wait. WHY THE HAY DID SHE MAKE BOWLS!? How was she supposed to carry a bowl without spilling her hard-won water all over the place!?

“Gah! Stupid, Twilight! …Stupid stupid stupid!” Twilight raged at herself for a moment, before she realized that she hadn’t actually made more than one bowl just yet. Catching the drops of water from the construct would also be rather tricky if she had instead made a …a canteen, or something similar.

She really should have studied transmutation spells more thoroughly. If she could make vinyl or rubber from dirt or sand, she’d be in a much better position right now. But as it so happened, the only spells she knew that could hope to be useful were limited to changes between several common fruits, most common hardwoods, glass and the common silicate materials used in construction, and a single species of bullfrog native only to central Equestria ...which she would never be messing with ever again after her last attempt had mad a young frog's life rather difficult. The most useful and strong material she could make in the wild was glass, so that was probably the way to go. She’d learned the technique shortly after checking the average prices for laboratory glassware in Canterlot, and comparing it against the value of the playground sand and time it took to make her own. Her homemade equipment may not have been the highest quality, but those salesponies were crazy to expect a mare to pay such ridiculous prices for collection beakers and distilling flasks!

Twilight stared hard at a patch of dry sand near her hooves. She narrowed her eyes, and pictured what she wanted to make in her mind. Thirty seconds later, she had two large glass jugs in her telekinetic grasp. Another twenty seconds, and a wooden stopper popped into the top of each jar with a ‘sqweak’.

She turned to check on the condenser's progress, and dropped her jugs. The bowl beneath it was already half full, and the flow of water had increased to a steady trickle. She did a quick calculation, and estimated she would have both her jugs full in half an hour or less.

…Twilight wanted to cry. This was not what she’d expected. Not at all... At this rate, she wouldn’t even have much of a headache to deal with. She’d have more water than she could probably even carry! She could even have enough magic left to build a tree house or an elevated gazebo, or something equally mentally stimulating!

She gave herself a full three weeks. She still had no food, or else she would have just stopped worrying about it and focused on getting home.

Looking around, Twilight decided to spend a good deal of time studying botany with her zebra friend, Zecora. She might even make it her top priority, when she got back. There were hundreds of different plant species in this forsaken forest, but she had no idea which leaves would give her energy, and which would make her sick. She doubted she’d run into a cabbage farm out here, much less a tasty carrot patch. It was all half dead weeds and shrubs as far as the eye could see, none of which looked particularly tasty ...or even edible.

So then... food was her next challenge. She would have to figure it by herself, somehow. And she would have to do so on the move, because her bowl was already overflowing…

Author's Note

Minor changes to this chapter, to fix Twilight coming across as - and I quote "Rainbow Dash with a horn".

Yup, it was that bad. Hopefully I fixed it, but that's your choice to make, isn't it?